QA in Agile

In Agile projects, quality comes to the fore and becomes an integral part of the development process. Yet Agile methodologies pay little attention to setting up the QA process within a team. This is the cause of many failed attempts to adopt Agile on a project, compounded by the old mindset of QA engineers, pitting testing against development, chasing quantitative quality metrics, and so on.

The key point is that in an Agile project, quality is a goal for every team member. The job of QA engineers is not to check the quality of work that’s already done, but to strive to make sure that work is done well. Testing often requires technical skills, and without developers and QA engineers joining forces, it won’t be possible to ensure the quality the product needs. QA engineers should take part in every stage of development, from planning through to demonstrating the results of the work.

This training introduces you to several models of the QA process in Agile projects, each of which defines clear roles and responsibilities for team members. The proposed models have been tested in practice and, when applied correctly, not only improve product quality but also unite the team around a common goal. The training pays special attention to test automation, because Agile projects that don’t adopt it run into difficulties very quickly.

Goals and objectives

• Learn about the problems with traditional approaches to organizing QA processes in Agile
• Examine proven models for building QA processes in iterative development, using Scrum as an example
• Get an overview of the QA engineer’s role in an Agile team
• Explore test automation strategies for different contexts